A Hundred Million Years in Seclusion! The Seed of the Great Dao

Unfortunately... this Primordial purple qi was not pure.

Ao Changsheng looked at the strands of Heavenly Dao rules hidden within the Primordial purple qi and could not help feeling regret.

This Primordial purple qi had clearly been altered by the Heavenly Dao, or rather, by Hongjun.

Once this Primordial purple qi merged with the Primordial Spirit, it would probably help one merge not with the Great Dao, but with the Heavenly Dao!

That was the so-called... Heavenly Dao Sage!

That was why Ao Changsheng could not understand why Hongjun had actually taken the initiative to tell Nüwa and his disciples about him.

Hongjun was even willing to let them come looking for him of their own accord.

Was Hongjun not afraid that he would tell Nüwa and the Three Purities about the Primordial purple qi and ruin Hongjun's plans?

Ao Changsheng believed...

That among the six sages destined by the heavens in the Primordial World, though he could not speak for all of them...

If he explained Heavenly Dao Sages and Hunyuan Daluo to them, some would surely choose the path of a Primordial Daluo Golden Immortal.

Ao Changsheng had no intention of arguing over the strengths and weaknesses of Heavenly Dao Sages and Hunyuan Daluo.

A Hunyuan Daluo's mighty power belonged entirely to himself.

But a Heavenly Dao Sage was undying and indestructible, even if he fell.

As long as the Primordial World endured and the Heavenly Dao remained intact, he could quickly come back to life.

This was something a Hunyuan Daluo could never hope to match.

Even Ao Changsheng knew of no way to utterly wipe out a sage other than destroying the Primordial World.

Moreover, Heavenly Dao Sages merged with the Heavenly Dao and cultivated by comprehending it. Their cultivation speed was certainly far greater than that of a Hunyuan Daluo comprehending and creating his own Great Dao bit by bit.

However...

If Ao Changsheng had to choose, he would certainly choose the path of a Primordial Daluo Golden Immortal.

Cultivation... in Ao Changsheng's understanding, was a word of freedom.

Even though he comprehended the Great Dao of the World through his inner world and used it as a reference for his cultivation...

He had never cultivated entirely according to the Great Dao of the World, step by step. Instead, he followed his own ideas.

He freely explored every direction of the Great Dao of the World and investigated every possibility.

That freedom, that exhilaration... was also why Ao Changsheng could sit for millions of years at a time, devoting himself wholeheartedly to arduous cultivation.

But the Heavenly Dao...

Ao Changsheng had experienced it before. In the years when he possessed the Jade Disc of Creation Fragment, the mysteries of the Heavenly Dao had seemed profoundly arcane and captivating.

Yet for some reason, Ao Changsheng had felt an indescribable oppression within them. Merely looking at those rigid, rule-bound mysteries had left him unable to breathe.

That was also why Ao Changsheng had given up the Jade Disc of Creation Fragment without hesitation.

He did not even know how Hongjun could possibly be willing to cultivate something like the Heavenly Dao.

Perhaps Fellow Daoist Hongjun has his own ideas, Ao Changsheng murmured inwardly.

Although they had only met twice, Ao Changsheng had a feeling about Hongjun...

Hongjun was certainly not the sort of cultivator who would willingly merge with the Heavenly Dao to make up for its deficiencies.

After giving it a little thought, Ao Changsheng gave up trying to guess at Hongjun's plans.

Judging by what he knew of the Primordial World, if the future did not change too drastically, Hongjun's arrangements...

Should span several great calamities and involve an incomparably long stretch of time.

Now...

It was still too early.

Ao Changsheng shook his head slightly. He was confident that, several great calamities from now, whatever Hongjun was scheming and whether it would affect him or not, it would all be utterly meaningless.

After putting away the treasures Nüwa had left and finding an island in his cultivation ground to plant the Innate Spirit Root, Ao Changsheng's incarnation dispersed.

Time flew!

"Ten million years of seclusion detected. Please make a new seclusion choice!"

"1. End your seclusion and venture into the Primordial World. Reward: the system will shut down."

"2. Continue your seclusion for a hundred million years and cultivate diligently. Reward: Seed of the Great Dao!"

Looking at the familiar system panel in his mind, Ao Changsheng opened his eyes.

"Has it been ten million years?"

Ao Changsheng let out a long sigh, filled with emotion.

He had been in seclusion for ten million years, and it had already been ten million years since he came to the Primordial World.

Ten million years was easy enough to say, but what a long stretch of time it was!

According to the theory of evolution from his previous life, it had taken only a few million years for apes to evolve into humans!

As for Ao Changsheng's cultivation, a million years ago, he had already nurtured the world within his body to the limit of a Small Thousand World.

After undergoing a cycle of destruction and rebirth, it had successfully become a Middle Thousand World!

His Dao cultivation and Law Power had also successfully been pushed to a level comparable to a Quasi-Sage's!

"After ten million years in seclusion, it really is a hundred million years next?" Ao Changsheng could not help sighing as he looked at the options on the system panel.

Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, ten million years in seclusion, and now it had jumped straight to a hundred million. Would the next one be a billion years?

The corners of Ao Changsheng's mouth twitched. At that rate, wouldn't it be ten billion, a hundred billion, a trillion after that...?

People always said that time was worthless in the Primordial World, but that did not mean time was truly infinite.

One great calamity lasted 6.48 billion years. How many great calamities had passed in the Primordial World so far, and how many more could there be in the future?

By that reckoning, how many more rewards could he get?

With the thought that he might have to remain in seclusion until the Primordial World was destroyed, Ao Changsheng decisively chose the option to continue his seclusion for a hundred million years.

A seed that looked no different from an ordinary weed seed then appeared in Ao Changsheng's hand.

At the same time, information about the seed appeared in Ao Changsheng's sea of consciousness.

"Seed of the Great Dao: Pour your essence, Qi, and spirit into it, then water it with sufficient Spiritual Qi, and it can grow into a Tree of the Great Dao that belongs to you alone."

"Afterward, if it absorbs enough Spiritual Qi, it can even bear Fruits of the Great Dao. A mature Fruit of the Great Dao contains one complete Great Dao."

After reading the information about the seed, Ao Changsheng's face immediately took on an expression that said he had expected as much.

As the length of his seclusion grew, the rewards might not necessarily get better and better, but their corresponding level was certainly getting higher and higher.

For instance, the Ancestral Dragon Breathing Technique from the first reward reached the limit of its potential at the Daluo Golden Immortal stage.

The Supreme-Grade Innate Spirit Treasure, the Ancestral Dragon Pearl, from the second reward would be useful at most through the Quasi-Sage stage.

The Eye of the Candle Dragon from the third reward would definitely count as a powerful Divine Ability even at the Primordial Daluo Golden Immortal level.

The Method of Opening an Inner World from the fourth reward involved cultivation at the Daluo, Quasi-Sage, Hunyuan, and even higher levels.

As for the fifth reward, the Seed of the Great Dao, the Fruit of the Great Dao it bore was a treasure that could speed up cultivation in the Hunyuan realm.

Whether it was a Dao-Merging Sage who walked the path of merging with the Dao or a Hunyuan Daluo who walked the path of proving the Dao...

After merging with or proving the Dao, their cultivation began to involve comprehending other Great Daos.

A Dao-Merging Sage needed to gradually merge with the three thousand Great Daos.

A Primordial Daluo Golden Immortal who had proven the Dao, meanwhile, needed to study the other three thousand Great Daos and fully integrate them into the Great Dao he had created.

This was not like proving the Dao, when one simply compared one's own Great Dao with others to perfect it.

Instead, one had to thoroughly comprehend all the other Great Daos and integrate them into one's own, allowing it to absorb all the mysteries of the three thousand Great Daos.

This cultivation was destined to be exceedingly long and... difficult!

But now that Ao Changsheng possessed this Seed of the Great Dao, he only needed to grow the Tree of the Great Dao, and then, each time it bore a Fruit of the Great Dao...

That Fruit of the Great Dao would contain one complete Great Dao.

One only needed to eat a Great Dao Fruit to comprehend that complete Great Dao.

Once a Dao-Merging Sage comprehended a complete Great Dao, he could easily merge with it, provided no one had already merged with it.

A Hunyuan Daluo, meanwhile, could also immediately comprehend the corresponding complete Great Dao after eating a Great Dao Fruit.

And once he had comprehended a complete Great Dao, integrating it into his own Great Dao would be as easy as could be for a Hunyuan cultivator.

As the owner of the Tree of the Great Dao, Ao Changsheng would not even need to compare the complete Great Dao with his own to integrate it.

He only needed to eat it, and he could effortlessly integrate it into his own Great Dao.

He could swiftly complete his cultivation in the Hunyuan realm at a terrifying speed.

If word of a treasure like the Seed of the Great Dao got out...

Let alone Ao Changsheng, even the entire Primordial World could not hope to survive the mighty experts who would come swarming out of the Chaos.

However...

Ao Changsheng gazed at the seed in his hand. A Dao Fruit appeared above his head, and he sent a strand of Law Power containing his essence, Qi, and spirit into it.

An emanation almost identical to Ao Changsheng's immediately spread from the unremarkable seed.

Then the seed abruptly seemed to turn into a black hole, rapidly devouring the surrounding Innate Spiritual Qi.

Looking at the speed at which it absorbed Innate Spiritual Qi...

His Yellow Center Plum and Jianmu, the World Tree sapling, should all die of shame.

But... by comparison, never mind the Innate Spiritual Qi needed to grow a Fruit of the Great Dao.

Even to get this seed to sprout, Ao Changsheng estimated it was unlikely to take less than a billion years.

"I knew it!"

Ao Changsheng's face darkened.

When he saw that the seed's information did not say it would mature once every so many tens of thousands of years, as an Innate Spirit Root would...

But instead spoke of sufficient Spiritual Qi, he had already faintly guessed this might happen.

"It would have been better to say it matures once every trillion years. At least then I'd have something to look forward to."

Ao Changsheng sighed, then casually placed the seed in his cultivation ground and left it to absorb Spiritual Qi.